About Good Scents

The cut flower business ended in 2011 but I continue to post other items about gardening.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Tanacetum parthenium (Feverfew)

Feverfew is a nice filler flower. It forms clusters of half inch very double white flowers. There are single varieties that look like little white daisies with yellow centers but I have never grown them. The foliage is dissected and pale green and has a bitter smell, but it isn't very noticeable on the flowers. This is a useful flower for me because it will flower the first season and can be succession sown. In addition, most of them also make it through one winter and begin blooming in mid-June. By succession sowing and overwintering, I have several waves of this flower.

Like most fillers, feverfew doesn't look like all that much by itself (you can see them surrounding the lily, delphium and lisianthus below). However, it is easy to grow and can be combined with almost any other color or shape which makes it very useful.

Feverfew is simple to grow from seed, just surface sow and they will appear in days. I started my first sowing today.